International Journal of Trend in Scientific
Research and Development (IJTSRD)
UGC Approved International Open Access Journal
ISSN No: 2456 - 6470 | www.ijtsrd.com | Volume - 1 | Issue – 5
An AHP Approachto Assess Hospital Websites
A.V.S. Prasad
Research Scholar, Department of OR&SQC,
Rayalaseema University, Kurnool,
Andhra Pradesh, India
Dr.Y. Raghunatha
aghunatha Reddy
Assistant Professor, Department of OR&SQC,
Rayalaseema University, Kurnool,
Andhra Pradesh, India
ABSTRACT
Hospital Website is a site that furnishes patients/users
with online information and information related
services, such as clinical services, various types of
treatments, symptoms of a disease, doctors
availability, and a channel of communication with the
hospital and peer users. These days, many people are
using the internet to choose a proper hospital/medical
center website with their required medical needs.
Hence the quality of websites of hospitals / medical
centers is very important to provide the requ
required
information of the patients or users. In this paper, we
use one of the most popular multi criteria decision
methods (MCDM);
MCDM); analytical hierarchy process
(AHP) to choose a hospital / medical center website in
Hyderabad.
Keywords: Multi-criteria decision method ((MCDM),
Analytical hierarchy process (AHP). Quality
uality metrics
1. INTRODUCTION:
These days, time is critical factor in human life.
Consequently,
the
organizations
including
hospital/medical centers, are attempting to give
electronic
ic administrations to the patients/users.
Hospitals are extremely populated centers; hence they
cause so many problems like viral diseases like cold
and fluand also, high price of doctor’s appointments,
long lines of reception in hospitals and necessity of
physical presence in laboratories, radiology and
sonography centers to receive the results have led to
an increase in using of hospitals/medical websites.
Using the internet and communication technology
provides the hospital and medical centers with the
following benefits: to provide more qualified services,
to provide valuable information for their patients, to
decline the expenditures, to have direct interaction
with patients, to save their time, to increase
efficiency, and finally to enable the hospitals/medical
hospit
centers to overcome the competitors. Recently, we
have seen a proliferation of electronic websites with a
tremendous amount of information either with high
quality, or with low quality, as well as sites that are
out right misleading. Furthermore,
Furthermor there has been a
rapid increase in the use of the internet for health
information and advice. Nowadays, it is believed that
prevention is prior to treatment. The explosion of the
web and increase in hospital/medical websites has
determined the need of comprehensive
omprehensive frame work to
evaluate the aspects related to the quality of
hospital/medical websites. The objective is to make a
hospital /medical website useful, profitable, efficient,
reliable, safe, and accessible. Awareness of quality
issues has recently
y affected all kinds of websites. An
organization, hospital or a medical center, with a
website which is difficult to use or to interact leads to
a poor image on the internet and weakens an
organization’s position. Therefore, it is important for
any hospital/medical
al/medical center to have the ability to
make an assessment of the quality of their services
and information, in order to improve their offerings
over time and benchmark against competitors.
There is limited number of research studies in which
more than onee or two assessment variables associated
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Aug 2017
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International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (IJTSRD) ISSN: 2456-6470
with design, organization and implementation of a
website are considered. Thus, while there should be a
considerable number and variety of factors associated
with website success, little researches exist about the
combination of these factors and services. In another
word, although there are various and remarkable
number of success factors in websites, there is not any
research comprehensively considers all of these
factors and services. In fact, there is not any
investigation relevant to hospital/medical websites.
The users are considered as an important factor in
realization of purposes in an organization.
Accordingly, users and their needs should be the
priority in designing and implementing websites. To
know users means that to understand how they make
preferences. Generally, user preferences for a website
indirectly measured through an interview or a
questionnaire. In our research, to interacted and
consulted with users and studding the visitors and
patients’ feedback, a questionnaire was voluntarily
distributed among a great number of users of four
hospital/medical websites; including doctors, website
designers and usual people. By visiting
hospital/medical websites and their different sections
and services, the users consciously or unconsciously
gave different values to the factors evaluating
websites’ quality. Then, we used the obtained data as
a base to make a conceptual frame work.
2. LITERATURE REVIEW
Because of the great expansion of websites in all
dimensions of life and dependency on web services in
different organizations, websites characteristics are
really important. They have been a constant concern
of research in different domains and they were widely
studied in the e-commerce literature. Although, as it
mentioned before, there are limited number of studies
in which more than one or two variables associated
with design, implementation and organization of web
site are considered. Thus, while there should be a
considerable number and variety of factors associated
with website success, little research exists about the
combination of these factors and services. Most of the
current studies are either dealing with a limited
number of quality factors or directed toward a specific
web service. The literature review is organized in
three sections as 1) literature review related to all
types of websites in general, 2) literature review
related to hospital/medical websites,3) literature
review related to mathematical models used to
evaluate websites.
2.1. Literature review related to all types of
websites in general
Chang liu et al. [1] had identified that the four factors,
playfulness, system use, service quality, and system
design are important in website success. Nicolae
George Dragulanescu [2] had done an attempt to
propose basic criteria to evaluate websites quality.
Ming Hui Huang[3] had pointed that a successful
website should be able to use its attributes to satisfy
both entertainment and the information needs of users.
Marquis, G.P.,[4] had studied the use of traditional
system design techniques to website design. Soyoung
Kim et.al.,[5] had introduce a dimensional hierarchy
for quality of retailer websites, and they had also
introduced websites quality dimensions presented by
different persons and sources. Gonzalez, F.J.M et
al.,[6]had evaluated commercial websites. They have
pointed four categories: accessibility, speed,
navigability, and content are the important factors for
website success. Jos van Iwaarden et al.,[7] had
conducted a survey on students of universities to
identify the factors for university websites. Luis
Casalo et al.,[8]had discussed the role of perceived
usability, satisfaction, reputation and consumer
familiarityon the website loyalty formation process.
Layla Hassanet al.,[9] had proposed general criteria to
evaluate the quality of website regardless of the type
of service that it offers. They have identified that
content quality, organization quality, design quality,
and user -friendly quality is the dimensions for the
criteria. To evaluate websites, Kuo et al.,[10]
conducted a survey on organizational websites and
identified four dimensions: information quality
empathy, ease of use and accessibility. Zeithaml et al.,
[11] developed a measure scale including eleven
dimensions of service quality of transaction websites
by using focus group interviews of consumers. They
are: personalization, security, responsiveness,
assurance/trust, site aesthetics, access, ease of
navigation, efficiency, flexibility, reliability, and price
knowledge
2.2. Literature review related to hospital/medical
websites
Pierre Michaud et al.[12] had studied implementation
and evaluation of health website for adolescents in
Switzerland which focused mainly on health issues.
N.B.Teo et al.,[13] had used an interactive web-based
questionnaire to evaluate a breast cancer website.
Karsten Wend Land et al [14] had explained the
optimal solutions for the website. Elizbeth Silence et
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International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (IJTSRD) ISSN: 2456-6470
al.,[15] had discussed the health websites that people
can trust hypertension. They have pointed the key
difference between face-to-face communication and
web-based systems. Recently, in health and medicine
field, the internet has become an important mass
medium for consumers seeking health information
and health care services online [16]. Evaluation on
websites related to medical health has naturally
become a hot topic in the studies of health informatics
and information management. Research of this kind
involves Kim and colleagues’ [17], Schmidt & Ernst’s
[18], Cui’s[19], and Wang’s[20], etc. In Schmidt &
Ernst’s research, it is found the most popular websites
on complementary and alternative medicine for cancer
offer information of extremely variable quality. Many
endorse unproven therapies and some are outright
dangerous. Similar views can also be found in Cui’s
research. In Wang’s research, however, more
attention is paid to the formation of index system with
the statistical methods. Through taking the step of
reviewing literature, it can be found that research
concerning hospital website evaluation makes up for a
minority although there is quite a number of
researches related to evaluation on medicine-related
information online [21–25]. Only Wang’s study is
related to evaluation on hospital websites in China.
Increasingly, hospital websites are beginning to act as
extension of hospital service, offering access to a
range of information and applications. Therefore, in a
bid to facilitate the public’s access to reliable
information and services from hospital websites, we
deem that it is very imperative to evaluate hospital
websites, especially those large-sized comprehensive
ones.
2.3.Literature review related to mathematical
models
Quahri Saremi et al.,[26], used graph theory
definitions, quadratic problem approach, ant-colony
technique and meta-heuristic method to design the
website. Duan et al.,[27], had used algebraic
reasoning for effective website maintenance. Moreno
et al.,[28] used 2-tuple fuzzy linguistic approach for
assessing websites. Zhou used [29] data crawler,
recursive, parser and data transmission algorithms to
measure the websites. However, the website selection
involves multiple criteria, so instead of traditional
methods the multicriteria decision methods (MCDM)
can give the best solution. Multiple Criteria Decision
Making(MCDM) is a largely used discipline to solve
complex decision problems involving more than one
criterion [30]. MCDM also is continuously growing in
fields of Mathematics, Decision Sciences, Business,
Management and Accounting, Medicine, Social
Sciences, Environmental Science, Economics,
Econometrics and Finance, etc. MCDM methods are
increasingly being used in the last decade. In order to
evaluate web site quality, any process goes through a
step of specifying certain criteria. The distribution of
criteria importance and ranking web sites are
generally solved by MCDM techniques[31].There are
many methods as AHP, ANP, TOPSIS, VIKOR,
PROMETHEE, ELECTRE; choosing the best method
is, it-self, a multi-criteria decision-making problem. In
this paper, we considered Analytical hierarchy
process (AHP) for website evaluation. AHP is
developed by saaty [32]is a decision-making method
for prioritizing alternatives when the multiple criteria
must be considered. There are various applications of
AHP, we review few studies. Dolan et al.,[33]
provided a detailed review of the theoretical
foundations and methodology of the AHP using the
treatment of a dog bite wound as motivating example.
Castro et al.,[34] applied AHP to the selection of
diagnostic tests for upper abdominal pain. Richmen et
al.,[35] applied the AHP for prostate cancer treatment.
Turri.J.J., [36] applied AHP to select magnetic
resonance imaging vendor. Tak, F.W., [37] used AHP
to evaluate image quality of both conventional and
computed radiology Hummel et al.,[38] proposed the
application of AHP to the medical technology
assessment that occurs during the development
process and prior to clinical diffusion.. Kwak et
al.,[39] used AHP to human resource planning in
hospital. Chang et al[40] applied AHP as a part of
study of service quality for nursing home. R. Rekik et
al., [41] had used Fuzzy reduced method for
evaluating the quality of institutional web sites.O. I.
Markaki, et al., [42] had used Fuzzy Analytic
Hierarchy Process to Evaluate the Quality of EGovernment Web Sites. X. Yu, et al.[43], used AHP
and fuzzy TOPSIS for ranking of e-commerce
websites in e-alliance.
3. METHODOLOGY
In this study, we considered the seven-quality
metrics/criteria: content quality, design quality,
organization quality, user friendly quality,
performance quality, service quality and technical
points, proposed by Vahid Rafe et al., [44]and
assumed that the patient/user’s requirement is to know
the disease symptoms ,to get second opinion from the
concerned specialists, to know the information about
various clinical services and process and to know the
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International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (IJTSRD) ISSN: 2456-6470
preventive methods for normal health problems but
not for serious , emergency cases.. This paper presents
the ranking for the websites of top four hospitals in
Hyderabad: APOH, CARH, YASH, KIMH, and the
hospital names are not revealed because of their
corporate security. The first three letters represent the
hospital name. In this study, we use analytical
hierarchy process (AHP) which can be used for
qualitative and quantitative data The AHP measures
the relative importance of alternatives. The
importance of one priority over the another can be
judged by numerical value using a scale of 1-9 where
1 denotes equal importance and 9 denotes the
absolutely highest importance. The result of these
comparisons using the AHP scale is a square n  n
matrix. A pair wise comparison is based on evaluating
two elements (alternatives or criteria) at a time. A pair
wise comparison is the process of comparing the
relative importance, preference, or likelihood of two
elements with respect an element in the level above.
When all the pair wise comparisons are done, we
calculate the priorities and a measure of consistency
of our judgement. Generally, the consistency ratio
should be less than 0.10(10%). The number of
comparisons would be n(n  1)
, where n is the
2
number of criteria in the model. Detailed description
of the theoretical aspects of AHP can be found in
Saaty.[32] Table-I shows the quality metrics and
corresponding indicators.Table-2 and 3 shows the
AHP results


Table-1
Quality metrics
Elements and Indicators
Content quality
Comprehensive content, relevance usefulness, timely, Multilanguage.
Design quality
Organization quality
Appropriateness, attractiveness, colors, text,
Logical structure, sitemap, scope, links, navigation, organization.
User friendly quality
Ease of use, interactive features, privacy, customization, satisfaction.
Performancequality
Speed,accessibility,security, responsiveness, usability
E-appointment, E-medical data base, E-laboratory, E-frequently asked
questions, E-payment, Helping functions, Hospital events
Service quality
Technical points
Programming language, page structure, size of website, extendibility,
solving technical problems,
Table-2
Quality metrics
Content quality
Organization quality
Design quality
Service quality
User friendly quality
Performance quality
Technical points
weightage
0.174712
0.167421
0.0980093
0.164308
0.129514
0.155287
0.110749
max  10.9799
C.I  0.663316
CR  0.5025
 n
max = largest eigen value,C.I =consistency index=  max
 ,C.R=consistency Ratio= C.I/saaty index, here
 n 1 
n=7, saaty’s index =1.32 (corresponding to n=7). The AHP solution shows that first rank for AHOP, second
rank for KIMH, third rank for CARH, and fourth rank for YASH
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International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (IJTSRD) ISSN: 2456-6470
Table-3
Website
APOH
YASH
CARH
KIMH
AHP weighting
0.2804
0.2087
0.2477
0.2595
4. CONCLUSION
In this study, we have applied Analytical hierarchy
process (AHP) to give ranking for the four websites of
hospitals corresponding to the seven-quality metrics.
AHP is a good method which gives ranking for the
alternative by using pair wise comparisons. We can
use new criteria to evaluate websites and other
methods of multi criteria methods (qualitative and
quantitative). This technique can be used to evaluate
other websites also.
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